


No Matter How Far You Run (You Have Not Gone Too Far)

by orphan_account



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 15:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12820152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Len's life is a story is a lie is true in a way nothing else is. Most importantly, it's his.





	No Matter How Far You Run (You Have Not Gone Too Far)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sperrywink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sperrywink/gifts).



Humans have a remarkable tendency to turn a series of events into a story, a sequence into a narrative. The human habit of seeing patterns in everything has made things from everything from art to to math to cloud watching possible, but here’s the thing: sometimes the clouds are just clouds. An electrical socket may look like a face but that doesn’t mean it is one.

 

Here’s the story that Len likes to tell himself: when his father started seeing everyone around him as a target, he made himself a bigger one, loud and snarky and the center of attention, because if Dad’s going to go after someone, it needs to be him and not Lisa. That’s what older siblings are supposed to do, what he’s there for. Protecting her is his job and he’s going to do the best he can and if eclipsing her through a tendency towards melodrama and a knack for groan worthy puns is how he can make Dad leave her alone, then that’s what he’s going to do, and that’s what he did. And afterwards...after growing up deliberately trying to draw attention with everything from his posture to his puns to his tone of voice, it’s hard to change because it’s become who he is, and he knows how to use it strategically so he doesn’t need to change it anyway.

 

It’s not a story anyone can contradict, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Doesn’t mean that it’s anything more than an excuse to be a drama queen. Lisa, Mick, Barry - the people that know and love him best and the world - have all referred to him as overdramatic or a diva or something similar at some point, and. When he and Lisa were children and she whined about him having to be the star of the show, he told himself that it was for her sake and believed it. But Dad’s dead now and was largely gone for years before that, and blaming him for patterns of behavior that Len has to this day is petty and childish at best. Maybe Len was born the kind of person who wants to be the center of attention, and tried to make himself feel like a hero for things he would have done anyway. Maybe he got hurt more than Lisa not because he was trying to protect her, but because Dad was right -- because out of the two of them, Len has always been the worse child. 

 

If that’s true, if he bore the brunt of it because he deserved it, not because he chose it...Len doesn’t know how to deal with that. Just like he doesn’t know how to deal with this. 

 

He and Mick have been a couple for a while now, a package deal for even longer, despite the fact that they’ve had several breakups lasting months, with the longest at nearly a year, since they’d first partnered up (although Mick still likes to say “we were apart for lifetimes, when I was with the Time Masters. Lifetimes,” he means it now in jest, rather than with bitterness. That doesn’t make it any easier to swallow, but he pretends to take it as the joke it’s meant.) The new element is Barry, who was never really their enemy even when they were on opposite sides, who’s as broken as they are but bright, nevertheless. So is Mick, in his own way. Lightning and fire both build, both life as well as destroy. Cold just kills.

 

He doesn’t want to do that to the people he loves. He and Lisa never quite rebuilt the bridge he tore down when he left her, and he’s always been afraid of building it back up only to hurt her, so he leaves it alone. He says he doesn’t want her to have a record, she complains but agrees, and they both pretend that that’s the reason they’ve grown apart.

 

Meanwhile, he’s been fine spending the better part of thirty years by Mick’s side, managing to fool himself over the years into buying into Mick’s reputation, into seeing him as an unstoppable wall of muscle who couldn’t be harmed. Since this game of cops and robbers turned into heroes and villains, it’s been harder to hold onto that illusion. Since the thing with Kronos, it’s downright impossible.

 

With Barry, he never even had the lie. He started their relationship with a gun designed to hurt him, seeing Barry as a pawn instead of a person and for all that he loves him now he’s not sure that that way of thinking has actually changed, and he hates himself for it but he calculates Barry’s reactions the way he counts seconds, easily and automatically.

 

Because here’s the thing. Len manipulates people the way he breathes -- constantly, unconsciously, and much more easily if he’s not actually thinking about it. It’s a habit he can’t turn off, doesn’t know how to, and it’s a habit he knows isn’t good or healthy for him and the people around him but it’s also  _ who he is. _ He twists people to get what he wants from them, and it’s one thing to do that to a mark or to a threat but another to do that to someone you claim to care about, to someone who cares about you.

 

The rest of the heroes, the Wests and Team Flash and Team Arrow and the Legends and the average civilian, once the word gets out about the Flash and his villains, worry that he’s a danger because of his gun. That if and when he hurts Barry, it’ll be with a gun in his hands and a smirk on his face. No one worries about him hurting Mick, even the team who sent him off to kill him. No one worries about other kinds of harm. 

 

He wants the best for Mick, for Barry, but he’s also selfish, too. He wants them to love him, to pay attention to him, to be kind, and the problem is, he knows how to get it. Knows which buttons to push, which levers to pull. Knows that just like making himself a target got his dad mad, and then consequently made his dad kind ( _ he was never a better father than when treating blood and bruises he himself had caused) _ , being altruistic makes Barry happy just as being clever makes Mick impressed, and that getting their adrenaline pumping, whether for a heist or for heroics, is a sure fire way to end the night in laughter and high spirits instead of vaguely romantic coexisting.

 

Granted, “vaguely romantic coexisting” has its perks too. There’s something uniquely perfect about sitting around their apartment, watching Barry shovel down ungodly amounts of food and caffeine while Mick watches Barry, an enamored look in his eyes. It’s calm and peaceful and Mick and Barry bring just as much to the domestic side of their relationship as they do to the adrenaline-rush side, and Len loves that, loves them, but is also acutely aware that he can’t really contribute to domesticity, aware that while he masterminded the high of last night, the joy in Barry’s eyes and Mick’s laugh, he’s not an essential part of the morning after. The feedback loop of Mick cooking and Barry eating and both of them deriving enjoyment from it doesn’t require his presence, and he knows that he can make them give him affection but he also knows that he doesn’t want to make them do anything.

 

Len has spent so much of his life lying about who he is that he’s not really sure who is, at the bottom, not sure if Cold or Leonard is the real mask, if none of his personas are real and he’s just lies all the way down, now. He doesn’t want his relationship to be like that, to be lies. He wants it to be real, but he doesn’t know how to make that happen.

 

He leans on the kitchen doorway, automatically posing, head cocked, hip out, but he’s not paying attention to that. He’s just -- watching, looking at the love between his partners, both of them frequent liars but somehow still breathtakingly genuine. When Barry wants a hug, he opens his arms. When Mick wants to cuddle, he says so. When Len wants comfort, he gets himself injured, gets them concerned enough to care. Oh, he knows they care about him all the time, hurt or not, but it’s the easiest way to get them to offer affection and he doesn’t know how to ask outright, can’t make the words pass his lips.

 

Because here’s the other thing. For all that he worries about hurting the people he cares about, he also knows full well that they’re capable of hurting him, knows that both of them have. Sure, they’ve been in the right every time, with Mick never raising a hand to him unless he’s done something wrong, Barry only fighting him as the Flash, neither of them saying hurtful words unless he’s hurt them, but deserved hurt is hurt all the same. He’s already given them enough leverage, letting them into his life and his home and his bed. He doesn’t want to let them any farther into his heart then he has to.

 

He watches the loves of his life sit in the kitchen, and knows that they’re already there. He doesn’t trust them not to hurt him, to use every emotional piece of leverage he gives them, and probably never will, because he’s not wrong. But. This thing he does, of holding up various masks to get different reactions, isn’t fair to them, and it’s not fair to him either. Self preservation is all well and good, but only matters if there’s a self left to preserve. He may already be years too late to have an authentic relationship with his lovers, but he can make it less false, and he’s going to try.

 

That decided, he swings his arm down from the top of the doorway, moving to enter the room, and Barry looks up, halfway through chewing the third omelette Len’s seen him eat in the short time he’s stood watching. He manages to swallow his food and beam at the same time, a maneuver only he could pull off. “Morning, Len!”

 

Mick turns his gaze from Barry to the doorway, and while there is no effusive smile on his face nor loud greeting from his mouth, he’s clearly happy to see Len too, which is gratifying as they both see him all the time. “Morning to you too, Barry,” he drawls, mouth turning up at the corner. He flicks his eyes over and adds, “Mick,” raising a calculated eyebrow in Mick’s direction, before catching himself, remembering the epiphany that he’d come to less than a minute before.

 

He’s used to trying to keep his voice casual, in an easy-sounding drawl that is actually hell on his throat, and speaking in his normal register is harder than he remembers. “So,” he says, voice not drawling, mouth not smirking, blood pumping as though he’s facing a threat -- which, given how love works, he supposes he is. “Do I get a good morning hug?”

 

Len’s life may be a disconnected series of events, but he’s only human, and he sees it as a story. It’s dark, sure, darker then he’d wish on anyone, but -- it’s his story, and he will write it as happily as he can.

 


End file.
